Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

A time of war and misery

The decade of the 1860s was the most disastrous period in the city's history. The city's strategic location made it a battleground during the Civil War; South Texas suffered a searing drought that lasted seven years; and a yellow fever epidemic in 1867 filled the small town's graveyards.
   Besides talk of the coming war, the big news in August, 1860, was the murder of Deputy Sheriff Tom Nolan, an Irish orphan who had been a bugle boy in the Mexican War. He was killed trying to arrest a drunk, who was then chased down and shot to death on Chaparral. Nolan's brother Matt, the sheriff, would be gunned down three years later a block away, on Mesquite Street.
   The talk of the town in late 1860 and early 1861 was of the coming conflict. There were staunch Union supporters in Corpus Christi due to the fact that many Mexican War veterans from the North settled here. Nueces County voted 142 to 42 in favor of secession on Feb. 23, 1861.
   The first troop of soldiers organized in Corpus Christi wore gray uniforms and around their waists were tied red silk sashes made by wives and sweethearts. The Ranchero, the town's newspaper, warned that Corpus Christi was vulnerable to attack by sea. The warning was borne out a year later when a fleet of U.S. ships sailed into the bay and anchored off Water Street.
   Corpus Christi residents buried their valuables and streamed out of town. They camped for three days on the drought-parched prairies west of town under a scorching August sun. They could hear the boom of guns as the ships and a Confederate battery exchanged fire. The town was shot up before the fleet sailed away. A_month later, the commander of the bombarding ships, Lt. J.W. Kittredge, was captured when he was rowed ashore at Flour Bluff in search of fresh eggs and buttermilk.
   The salt trade
   In 1863, the Zion sank off Ohler's wharf with a load of salt. Salt mined from the Laguna Madre was Corpus Christi's main contribution to the war effort, along with its men and boys. Conscription laws were rigidly enforced; boys who reached 18 were sent away to fight; males too young, too old or not healthy enough for the army were made to drive wagons on the last stage of the Cotton Road from Banquete to Matamoros. Two Corpus Christi boys, William and Robert Adams, once described how they helped drive the huge ox-drawn wagons to the border. They were paid $10 Confederacy a month.
   With the men gone, the women tried to make do. Soldiers' wives received stipends in almost worthless Confederate currency. There wasn't much they could buy anyway; food was scarce because of the drought and blockade. A few luxuries like coffee and sugar were brought in by blockade runners, like Capt. James Grant of Padre Island.
   Toward the end of 1863, the 20th Iowa regiment, which had fought at Vicksburg, captured Mustang Island. At Christmas, commander of the 20th, Maj. William Thompson, led a scouting party into Corpus Christi. He wrote his wife that it was hard "to see so many starving, absolutely starving, for want of the most common necessitives of life."
   Cattle butchered at Salt Lake
   Confederate soldiers would butcher a few beeves, which were scrawny because of the drought, at the Salt Lake, a mile from town, and distribute meat to starving families. Yankees gave food to the Unionists, or "turncoats" or "renegades" as they were called by the rebels.
   During the bitterly cold winter of 1863, federal troops came to Corpus Christi and pulled down houses belonging to Confederates, using the lumber to build huts on Mustang Island. Confederates retaliated by stripping the houses of the "turncoats." Union forces were withdrawn from this area of the Gulf Coast before the war's end.
   In the last winter of the war, in December, 1864, Thomas Noakes of Nuecestown brought a saddle tree he made to try to sell in Corpus Christi. He wrote in his diary that he found the place in a state of desolation, everything gone to ruin and hardly a living soul to be seen.
   This is the first of two parts. Part two will appear next Wednesday.
  
   Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.
  
  

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